This is a very old character type, referred to by this name since at least 1864.

A subtrope of The Professor. And some sort of genius, they used to call me, what was it?— TV Genius, that was it. Compare also... um... blast it!... ah yes, the Mad Scientist, who often exhibits this trait. I do so only reluctantly. And of course, I must mention my colleagues in the math department. Some of them go a bit beyond absent-minded, though.

Read or Die: Yomiko Readman qualifies. She's not a professor (although she is a substitute teacher), but she gets so caught up in her reading that her friend Nenene has to leave post-it notes scattered around her apartment reminding her to do things like close the door and eat.

Saiyuki Gaiden: Field Marshal Tenpou isn't technically a professor, but otherwise fits this trope to a T. He's like if you took an absent minded professor and made him a military officer. Though he does notably teach Goku to read, which saves his later incarnation, Hakkai, who is a teacher but the opposite of absentminded, from doing so.

Wataru Amanogawa from the Sailor Moon Stars season is a schoolteacher version of this (Though he could have been an uni professor, he declined it due to personal preferences.) Then he was attacked by Sailor Iron Mouse...

Kenjirou from Vividred Operation is a professor who had participated in the development of the Manifestation Engine and is shown to be a talented researcher who may forget family meals while involved on his projects. Following an accident, his body literally become absent of mind as his consciousness gets transferred into a doll.

Professor Dingy from Wowser often creates inventions to make life better for him and Wowser, only for the invention to wind up in the hands of RatsoCatso.

Van Hohenheim from Fullmetal Alchemist is generally a somber and serious character, but he can space out at times. Once, while setting up a swing set for Ed and Al, he stopped to think about other things and proceeded to fall out of the tree.

Comics

There is a throwaway gag in the Tintin album The Broken Ear, a man mistaking a parrot for a lady. The man is completely unimportant to the story (the parrot is the point) but Hergé took the time to identify him as 1) very absent-minded and 2) a Professor. In the original French he climbs up a lantern to look at this strange bird and the following dialogue ensues:

Parrot: Good morning, sir! With whom do I have the honour?

Professor: I-I'm Professor Euclide ... I ... excuse me, sir, I was distracted and ... would you believe I mistook you for a bird!

Speaking of Tintin, Professor Calculus has some aspects of this. He is also stone deaf. This was Played for Laughs too. Calculus is, in fact, the quintessential absent-minded professor.

The title character of Savant Cosinus by Christophe (1893), was so absent-minded he once forgot he was in a dentist's waiting room and was mistaken for the dentist by a patient who told him she needed a root extracted. Cosinus then suggests to use tables of logarithms to perform the operation (confusing the root of a tooth with a square root...) Cosinus later inspired Hergé for the character of Professor Calculus.

A story in the only issue of now defunct Premier Magazine's Horror Anthology "Horror From the Tomb" from 1954 is not only about one, but also named after one.

Cubitus: Sémaphore, who isn't exactly a professor, but he does invent a lot of stuff.

Carlos from Welcome to Night Vale is typically portrayed as this in fanfic, with not very much canon to back it up. His obsession with science and initial obliviousness to Cecil's affections contribute to a fanon interpretation of Carlos as socially awkward and extremely nerdy.

Animated Films

Beauty and the Beast has Belle's father Maurice. He invents strange contraptions, gets lost in the woods on his way to a fair, ignores his horse Philippe's instincts to turn back, and ultimately ends up as the Beast's temporary prisoner.

Speaking of Disney movies, let's not forget Professor Porter, Jane's father in Tarzan, who certainly also falls into this trope.

Wayne Szalinski from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. He is an absent-minded professor, mixed with Man Child to the point of lampshading it in Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, and he's even more so in the TV series starring Peter Scolari.

Dr. Marcus Brody is turned into something like this. It's frequently mentioned he got lost in his own museum (one that he was the curator for)! Granted, he was getting older... Also, while he speaks multiple languages, he doesn't appear to know any that would be helpful in the real world:

Marcus: "Does anyone here speak English? Or maybe Ancient Greek?"

At one point, Indy tries to return to his office and is besieged by students because he hasn't been grading any of their work. He has to climb out the window to escape.

Subverted by Henry Jones, Sr. in the same movie: he is taken by many (including Indy) be an absent-minded professor, but in the end betrays himself as a man who is more attuned to his environment than originally thought.

Dr. Daniel Jackson in Stargate. He sets a cup of coffee on the edge of a staircase he's walking by, leaves papers scattered everywhere, writes on whatever is nearby...

Jack (the 2013 CBC movie) features Jack Layton as a fairly literal example of one; he was a political science professor, and he is portrayed in the movie as being somewhat absent minded. (Forgetting he was supposed to be at a particular fundraiser until 10 minutes after said fundraiser started, for example.)

Jokes

Three professors from the university of Prague are walking through a shopping arcade.

Prof 1: What's the time of the day?

Prof 2 (pulls out a matchbox): Tuesday.

Prof 3: Then we have to aboard!

(And they leave for the street.)

A biology professor announces a pop quiz, students will be forced to identify species of birds from their droppings. "Our first specimen—" He reaches into a brown paper bag and pulls out a ham sandwich. He frowns and dumps out the bag, revealing an apple and bag of chips. "My word," he blurts out, "What did I eat for lunch?"

Older Than Feudalism : The absent-minded professor is a favorite character of the Philogelos, a Greco-Roman joke book dating back to the third century AD.

Old Jewish Joke: Some students were curious how their brilliant Rabbi/Teacher would reason his way out of an odd situation. So one night they kept toasting his health until he fell asleep from the drink. They then moved him to the cemetery and hid to see what he would say as he woke up. When he did, his logic was "If I'm alive, why am I in the cemetery? If I'm dead, why do I have to go the bathroom?"

A doctor is making his rounds through the hospital when he stops to talk to the head nurse. The nurse says , "By the way, doctor, did you know you've got your thermometer stuck behind your ear?" The doctor feels around his ear and says, "Great, some asshole has my pen."

Professor Branestawm from the children's books by Norman Hunter perfectly embodies this trope.

Dr. Jacob Buckman from The Mote In Gods Eye and The Gripping Hand by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, who gets so caught up in the opportunity to observe the formation of a new star that he completely forgets to mention to anyone that the resulting gravitational shifts will release a race of hostile aliens into the galaxy. Earlier, he'd been so caught up in the observations he was taking as the ship he was on traveled through the outer layers of a red supergiant that he commented "If the Langston Field collapses, it'll ruin everything!" — referring to the loss of his data, not to the destruction of the ship or his own death.

In Steve Perry's Black Steel, Sleel's parents were revealed to be the two most famous botanists alive, and both embody this trope. The robot that delivers their meals had to be set with an annoying alarm that required a manual shut off, thus ensuring that they would stop work for meals.

Pretty much all the wizards at the Unseen University. The Bursar's mind in particular is on an extended leave of absence.

There's no non-magical university on Discworld, but if there were, Leonard of Quirm would also be an example. As it is, he's merely an absent-minded polymath.

Hubert Turvy in Making Money - the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork's economic forecaster and builder of a hydraulic water-based computer. But a classic Cannot Talk To Girls computer nerd.

Xenophilius Lovegood from the later Harry Potter books seems to fit the trope without actually being an academic of any stripe, if he's not actually an outright Cloudcuckoolander.

Samuel W. Taylor's short story "A Situation of Gravity" was the inspiration for The Absent-Minded Professor film.

An oceanographer in Der Schwarm conforms so exactly to this that it seems like really lazy writing, until you remember that the huge cast contains at least a dozen other professors, none of whom is anything like him.

Professor Pike of HIVE pretends to be excruciatingly absent-minded in front of his students so that he can observe them more easily without suspicion. Because this is just a front, he thinks of himself as being actually very put-together and clear-minded. In actuality, he is really only marginally less absent-minded than he pretends to be.

Land of Oz series: The Scarecrow. Brilliant fellow, but in the second book he forgets that all of Oz speaks a single, common language.

Professor Pinkerton-Barnes from Barnaby Grimes. He completely fails to notice when Barnaby is in a hurry to get away and track down the villain, instead prattling on about his latest theory, which involves small birds being turned savage by fruit.

Played with in one of the Honor Harrington novels when WEB Du Havel responds to Anton's demand that he keep an eye on the Princess and Anton's daughter with the derisive comment that he's an absent minded professor and that they'll outwit him left and right.

Daniel Boone Davis of The Door into Summer was absent-minded enough that he allowed his small engineering company to be taken from him by his business partner and his fiance because he was too busy designing the next big thing. Subverted in that he then proceeds to Take a Level in Badass by using his engineering genius—and knowledge of the future—to exercise an elaborate Batman Gambit as revenge.

Jacob Burroughs of The Number Of The Beast is described early in the novel as performing advanced mathematical calculations in his head, but needing to grab a calculator to learn that 2+2=4.

Also by Rick Riordan; Thoth from The Kane Chronicles who spends quite a while yammering on about his barbecue despite the fact that there are far more pressing things like the fact that Set is free again.

Then there's Arronax in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, who at one point became hugely fascinated while reading a book, only for his manservant to point out that he himself had written it.

Another good example occurs in Journey to the Center of the Earth: Trying to decipher Arne Saknussem's coded message, Professor Lidenbrock has the narrator Axel (who is secretly in love with the Professor's niece Grauben) write a message in a simple code. He then effortlessly decodes it - "Oh, how much I love you, Grauben" - and does not even notice that Axel has unintentionally revealed his attraction to Grauben to him or how embarrassed Axel is after realizing what he just did.

Mr. Meredith from the Anne of Green Gables series, though he is a minister and not a professor. He is so absent-minded that he doesn't notice when his children bring home an orphan that stays for a fortnight, or that his daughter rides pigs through the town. He once went to marry a couple and started to recite a funeral prayer instead of the marriage service. When the groom calls him on it, he rectifies his mistake, but the narrator notes that the bride never truly felt married from that day on.

Mr. Welch, a professor of history in Lucky Jim, is usually too scatterbrained to finish a sentence properly.

Justified in Septimus Heap, where Marcellus Pye is this owing to his old age of 500 years.

Belgarath and his fellow sorcerers in Belgariad. To emphasise, Belgarath once placed a diamond under a step of his tower to find out how long it would take to grind it down to a powder. Then he forgot about it. He had been stepping over the step for so long all the others were worn out in the middle, except that slab. It is made of stone. He also keeps misplacing things. When he got around to cleaning an area around his fireplace, just enough to allow him and Eriond to start a fire, they found a couple of couches, several chairs, and a table. Not to mention the green something he left in the pot which was ready to come alive. And it was not pea soup. He loses track of centuries at a time. Just to name a few. That is how engrossed he gets in his studies.

Discussed in Lord Chesterfield's Letters to His Son. He wasn't too fond of this trope: "Sir Isaac Newton, Mr. Locke, and (it may be) five or six more, since the creation of the world, may have had a right to absence, from that intense thought which the things they were investigating required." (letter I)

A non-human example from Foreigner: Grigi the Astronomer Emeritus of the atevi University. He is much more open and much less formal than other atevi, blithely ignores protocol (even in the presence of extremely annoyed assassins), and would much rather discuss astronomy and physics than things like political upheaval and the looming threat of war.

Henry from The Infernal Devices - while not really being a professor in the first place. But he's a brilliant inventor who just happens to forget things.

Felix Hoenikker from Cats Cradle is a negative example - he only cared about scientific work, and barely noticed his wife and children. Once, after a breakfast, he gave his wife a tip. He was the father of the atomic bomb, and he invented a potentially world-destroying substance called ice-nine, but didn't care about the dangers of either.

Candace of The Ultra Violets. Somewhat justified in that she is an extremely busy scientist, and things inevitably fall through the cracks.

Professor Jerry Lukacs of the Krim Pyramid books is so absorbed in his books that he can barely dress himself, let alone keep groceries stocked, and completely fails to notice that his workplace has been evacuated by the police due to alien invasion.

Mr. Wold in {{Ariel}} may be a teacher (as his wife is); what we do know is that he's extremely absent-minded and preoccupied. When Erskine half-jokingly suggests Ariel move in with him to avoid leaving the neighborhood, he claims "My father could live in the same house with you and never notice you were there. At dinner you could ask him to pass the salt and he'd pass it and still not notice."

Sir Austin Cardynge of the Lensman universe. Indomitably brilliant and dedicated to his job, but completely unhinged to the point where he doesn't even care if he and everyone else on his ship (with a crew of over a thousand) end up dead, so long as his notes get back to Civilization intact.

Neal Cloud, from the same universe (Masters of the Vortex), is an aversion. He's a mathematical savant capable of making complex calculations in the blink of an eye and being right every time, yet he's psychologically stable enough to have been happily married with three children - and after being widowed in the horrific cold open, he recovers (in time) from his grief and falls in love again.

Poetry

The first stanza of a poem from an old, out of print and almost certainly out of copyright British comic book annual:

Professor Marshmallow, remarkable fellow,

Knew everything, so it is said,

But failed when it came to remembering a name,

He couldn't keep those in his head.

He goes to a shop to try to buy something but forgets what he came to buy. After accidentally sitting in glue while searching in an attempt to remember what he wanted to buy and then becoming stuck to a chair, he finally remembers that he came to the shop to buy... a chair.

Live Action TV

Chilean children's show Cachureos had an Image song named "El profesor distraido", roughly translated as "Absent-Minded Schoolteacher".

(the Doctor puts a glass of water on the floor and stars at it) Amy: Why did you do that? The Doctor: Don't know. I think a lot. It's hard to keep track.

In one of the Eighth Doctor Adventures novels, The Multiverse is in danger and the Doctor is in his lab sorting it out. He leaves for a couple minutes and accidentally smacks one of his companions, Fitz, in the face with a door, giving him a nosebleed, and doesn't seem to notice. Four days later, the Doctor gives him a soiled handkerchief and apologizes, apparently unaware that four days have passed. As Fitz said in a much-earlier book, "Ladies and gentlemen, the mind of a Time Lord."

Both example are with Eleven. No doubt about it. His behavior in "The Big Bang" exemplifies this.

The Fourth Doctor was very prone to this. In one episode it was revealed that much of his education was via subconscious and sleep learning, so he knows a great many things but can't remember why or how he knows them, in addition to all the stuff he's picked up telepathically or just in the course of thousands of centuries of knocking about through the galaxies.

Walter Bishop in Fringe is a sound example. He constantly forgets the name of his lab assistant, flies off on tangents to talk about foodstuffs he likes, and delivers rambling anecdotes that may eventually lead to him remembering vitally important high-tech principles, or may go absolutely nowhere.

In the episode "Safe:" while investigating a series of bank robberies, it's more than halfway through the episode that he remembers that the boxes stolen were some of his inventions. It's later still that he remembers what's in them.

It seems to be largely a result of his mental illness, though -itself partly due to having parts of his brain cut out. His younger self and Walternate aren't absent-minded at all.

"Letters of Transit" takes place in an alternate future, and Walter has had brain damage which makes him even wackier then usual. When he has the excised parts of his brain restored to heal the damage, he becomes incredibly competent. And kind of a dick.

Deconstructed with Chance in Noah's Arc. When he has moments of forgetfulness (which are more frequent than the rest of the cast, it initially is played for laughs. Later on though, the behavior is gradually linked to his stresses at home (especially regarding his husband and stepdaughter).

Daniel Faraday, Lost. The youngest graduate of Oxford in its history, professor in his 20s, pioneer in Time Travel... and he can barely remember anything. Until the Island heals him, that is...

Both Charlie Epps and Larry Fleinhardt of NUMB3RS are prone to this. Charlie gets better as the series progresses, but Larry is often prone to being so deep in contemplation of either physics, math or philosophy that he forgets what's going on around him.

Larry: When you met me, was I coming or leaving the physics building?

One episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine includes a professor so absent-minded and such an Insufferable Genius that his wife uses a telepathic double to romance Captain Sisko to deal with his neglect. The professor was amusingly played by Richard Kiley, best known for portraying Don Quixote.

Battlestar Galactica (2003). In the first season Dr. Baltar appears to be this, with his odd habit of rambling on to himself. No one gives him more than a funny look as, after all, he's just the usual quirky genius, right? It's not as if he's got an imaginary Cylon in his head or something.

Ambrose/Glitch from Tin Man. Somewhat justified as the Big Bad really did take half his brain and keep it in a jar.

The scientist in The Outer Limits (1995) episode "Double Helix". His son calls him out on being so focused on his research that he was never there for his family. The scientist is incredibly shocked when he finds out that his teenage son is dating a 30 year old woman.

In Ellery Queen, Ellery is a certified genius. He is also constantly misplacing his glasses, hat, keys. etc. and accidentally leaving things in the fridge.

Music

There's a dreadfully funny song by the Spooky Men's Chorale called Sometimes I Forget Things.

Puppet Shows

The Muppet Show: Dr. Bunsen Honeydew. In fact, he sometimes straddles the line between this and Mad Scientist. His inventions are often absurd, and tend to blow up in his face, or far more likely, the face of his hapless assistant Beaker.

Radio

The Goon Show's Henry Crun, although an occasionally brilliant inventor, is both incredibly absent-minded and ridiculously old, meaning conversations about his latest creation tend to go like this:

Crun: Well, now that you've asked me a straightforward question... I have no option... but to give you a direct answer. [long pause] ...What was the question again?

Seagoon: Does that mean aeroplanes can land on it?

Crun: Land on what?

Seagoon: The aerodrome!

Crun: Ohh! Am I building one of those?

...And that's if you're lucky and he doesn't just fall asleep halfway through a sentence.

Tabletop Games

Dr. McQuark in the Champions supplement "The Blood and Dr. McQuark". As an example, he often asks where his glasses are and his employees tell him they're on his forehead.

The trope is used to explain the difference between wisdom and intelligence.

There is also the "Absent-Minded" trait, which improves Knowledge checks, but penalizes Listen and Spot checks.

The Izzet League from the Ravnica plane in Magic: The Gathering. Turns out that stressing creativity and having Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny! produces interesting magic, large explosions, bizarre gizmos, and no-one having any idea what they're actually doing except that it's a lot of fun and makes a loud noise.

From GURPS, we have the Absent Minded disadvantage, which is exactly what it sounds like. the game itself notes that it "is the classic disadvantage for eccentric geniuses".

In Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim, the Wizard class is this, with lines such as "Where did I put my spellbook?" Even the Easter Egg line is a mix-and-match of two old sayings. And on the game's official site, a story shows a wizard humming through the forest when a troll appears. The wizard quickly kills the troll and continues looking for mushrooms as if nothing happened.

Professor Elm from Pokémon Gold and Silver "steps out for a minute" while examining the starter Pokemon, just long enough for the rival to steal one of his Pokemon.

Professor Birch from Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, despite usually conducting his studies in the field, is ambushed by a Level 2 Poochyena, despite bringing three Pokemon of his own.

Professor Rowan from Pokémon Diamond and Pearl leaves behind his research bag, which contains the three starter Pokemon. Admittedly, this is not his fault, as his assistant was in charge of the bag, but he seemed not to notice that his highly valuable Pokemon were missing until after the player and the rival had pilfered two of the Pokemon.(However, this is not the case in Platinum, where they're given to the player and rival instead).

While not technically a professor, Warden Baoba of Fuchsia City's Safari Zone obtained the nickname "Slowpoke" due to his constant "vacant look" despite his vast knowledge of Pokemon.

Kang the Mad in Jade Empire pretty much breathes this trope to live. If asked if he's seen an old man...

I'm not so good with faces. Or names. Dates, too.

Dr. Warren Vidic of Assassin's Creed I is an evil example. The guy is under a lot of pressure, but would it kill him to put his security pen on the inside of his pocket so that he doesn't lose it and necessitate the entire complex's passwords being reset, or punctuate his emails, or treat the Animus subjects like people rather than vending machines for genetic memory?

Lucca of Chrono Trigger is milder than most of these examples, but when she saw Robo sitting inactive in the middle of an abandoned building the post-apocalyptic future, her immediate reaction is to repair it. Her father may also be of this character type (or just a workaholic), because in an optional subquest you read a younger Lucca's diary and she's very angry at her dad at neglecting herself and her mother.

Various lines from Maria and the Professor himself in the flashback levels of Shadow the Hedgehog imply Shadow's creator, Professor Gerald, to be this as well as a Mad Scientist.

Tolfdir may be the pre-eminent professor and master Wizard of Alteration in the College of Winterhold, but he still constantly misplaces his Alembic.

Wylandriah, the court mage of Riften, manages to forget every single thing she's told the Dragonborn by the end of her explanations. She outdoes Tolfdir by forgetting three different items across half the province; once you return from finding them she's forgotten that she asked you to retrieve them.

Final Fantasy IX has Dr. Tot. Held in high esteem by Garnet and Steiner (and for good reason), nevertheless he is the embodiment of this trope. Old? Check. Professor? Check. Absent-minded? "I'm sorry, I get lost in my thoughts sometimes." - to Eiko. Used to your advantage in Treno where he can lie to the owner of the synthesis shop to cover for Garnet, Steiner and Marcus.

Also vaguely inverted in FF-IX where you can equip an ability called 'clear-headed' that stops you being inflicted with confusion.

Greg the apothecary, from Dungeon Maker II: The Hidden War. He's brilliant and capable of making potions even the royal alchemists haven't figured out, but he's also forgetful and silly. He even dresses the part: long, messy hair, button up shirt that's improperly buttoned, and dark gray lab coat thrown on as an afterthought.

Absent Mindstein, one of the characters in Atlantis Underwater Tycoon, is described as being so absent-minded that he ends up inventing more whimsical but useless things than genuine life-improving things. He also apparently "left the keys to his time machine in the past." Which is probably why his main drawback is -10% Starting Funds for your Underwater City if you choose him.

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: Charles Babbage. On more than one occasion, he gets distracted from important stuff by minor details. While chasing a rogue steam-powered economic model that was wreaking havoc on everything in its path, he became obsessed with devising a means to protect it from damage while doing so rather than stopping it from moving.

Dr. Vladimir Stein from Blood Stain embodies this trope; he manages to forget that he booked a flight for Elliot and later, when Elliot arrives at his house, he is perplexed at who his visitor is. He himself states that his "time/space orientation is a little off".

Herr Doktor Archeville from the Global Guardians PBEM Universe. Brilliant scientist, and one of the most agile minds on the planet. Often forgets what city he's in, can't remember the actual names of his lab assistants so he labels them "Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta" and so on (and then get's that mixed up) and if those same lab assistants weren't paid to remind him would often forgets he needs to eat and sleep every so often.

SCP Foundation, SCP-2099 ("Brain in a Jar"). SCP-2099 is is brilliant enough to regularly create new anomalous objects at will, such as a cannon that fires ninja robots. However, he is also quite forgetful and depends on his notes to remember things.

Extra credit goes to the episode "A Big Ball of Garbage", where he goes to an inventors' competition, realizes the invention he brought (the death clock) is the same one he showed last year, attempts to invent the same thing again after it's pointed out to him ("I need a new invention! Perhaps some kind of death clock..."), quickly creates a new invention (the smell-o-scope) to replace it, then only hours later... "Eureka!" "You built the smell-o-scope?" "No, I remembered that I'd already built it last year!"

Gune: [holding up a small device] Does this look familiar? Do you know what it is? Neither do I. I made it last night in my sleep. Apparently I used Gindrogac. Highly unstable.

Preed: Gune...

Gune: I put at button on it. Yes. I wish to press it, but I'm not sure what will happen if I do.

Professor Sumdac of Transformers Animated. Occasionally forgets important things like eating and remembering to make a legal record of his daughter's existence, and doesn't have much common sense in general.

Professor Ludwig Von Drake, who started out as an absent-minded lecturer in the Wonderful World of Color (the continuation of the Disneyland program), eventually becoming an inventor by the time of House of Mouse and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

A villainous example is Professor Calamitus from The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, who was unable to finish anything (including his... um... his... sentences! That's it!) and had to kidnap Jimmy so that he could finish his inventions for him.

César from Generator Rex. He's superhumanly capable as a scientist and a master of technology decades ahead of the rest of the world, but forgets a lot of things not directly related to research. This isn't played entirely for comedy either, as he may have caused the nanite event that changed the whole world and cause the existence of EVOs in the first place. On top of that, he might not be as absent-minded as he seems.

Wizard version: The Moochick from the original My Little Pony. Very knowledgeable... to the point where he can have difficulty remembering a particular detail at first, like where he stashed the Rainbow of Light.

In the The Venture Bros. episode "Pomp and Circuitry" Rusty jokes that his son Dean will one day grow up to be this. Rusty himself sometimes qualifies, as he is sometimes a professor (guest lecturer in Mexico) and sometimes whole plotlines revolve around him being absent-minded (Escape to the House of Mummies Part 2). Also he has been known to forget the names of his own sons.

Ramon Ridley from Dogstar. His mind so focused on higher matters, that he will teleport places without putting his trousers on.

Real Life

There was a legend about Thales, the sixth-century B.C. philosopher and mathematician, falling into a well because he was gazing at the stars instead of watching where he was going. This tale became so iconic that it was eventually immortalized as one of Aesops Fables, making this one Older Than Feudalism.

A well-known legend about the 3rd-century B.C. mathematician Archimedes says that when he stumbled upon the solution to a problem he was wracking his brain on (how to tell whether or not a crown is pure gold), he got so excited that he leaped out of the bath and ran naked through the streets shouting, "Eureka!" ("I've found it!").

There is also the tale of his death: a Roman soldier tried to ask him where Archimedes could be found, not knowing it was him, as his boss wanted him alive. Unable to get the old man's attention (he was solving a geometrical problem on a sand table), the soldier got angry and eventually killed him. Archimedes' last words? "Do not disturb my circles!"

Isaac Newton is said to have invited a friend to dinner but to have subsequently forgotten about it. When the friend dropped by he found Newton in deep contemplation and, not wanting to disrupt his train of thought, sat and waited. Eventually a servant brought up dinner for one and the friend, still too polite to disturb his host, ate by himself. When Newton finally snapped out of it, he looked at the empty dishes and said, "If it weren't for the proof before my eyes, I could have sworn that I have not yet dined."

It is also said that Newton calculated Earth's orbit, explaining mathematically why it was elliptic, and then forgot all about it. He only thought of it again when astrophysicist Edmund Halley (the guy with the comet) asked him for help with the same problem.

Newton has a million of these. Another one involved him getting distracted on the way home by a student, and finishing by asking the student which way he was walking (he had forgotten whether he was just entering or just leaving the university building). His response when the student tells him that he was walking out of the university? "Wonderful. That means I've had lunch already."

One of the most infamous ones involve Newton using a potential love interest's pinky to clean his pipe. It is noteworthy that Newton by all accounts never married or was seriously connected to anyone and died (proudly) a virgin at the age of 84.

Another story of Newton: once his servant had to go out for errands while needing to hard-boil an egg for Newton, so he set an egg timer and told Newton to put the egg in the pot of boiling water when the timer was done. The servant came back to find the egg on the counter still uncooked and the egg-timer in the pot of boiling water.

Newton also had two cats, one large and one small. Their constant comings and goings began to annoy the whole family, so his mother asked him to cut a hole in the door so that the cats could go through without needing a human's help. He cut two holes, one large for the large cat, one small for the small cat...

Also subverted. Well-known is the idea that he often wore socks of a mismatched color. Less but still well-known is the idea that he always wore socks of matching thicknesses.

Didn't he eventually stop wearing socks altogether?

He once called his wife from a phone booth and asked her to remind him where he was going, because he forgot on the way.

He once used a $1500 cheque as a bookmark and lost the book.

He was occasionally seen walking down the street carrying a folded umbrella, in pouring rain.

John Nash, a Princeton mathematician. Good at what he does, but very strange (there's a book and an Oscar Baitmovie, which he says bears little resemblence to his real experience). One of his students asked him to demonstrate a proof. Which he did, mostly in his head. This was often his habit, writing only a handful of crucial steps out, leaving the "obvious" leaps in between to others. This time, the student creatively asked, "I'm not sure I understand, Professor. Could you do it in another way?" Nash thought about it for a moment, said, "Yes, certainly," then once again dashed out a couple of crucial steps on the board, for a different proof.

A variant of the same story is told about Norbert Wiener, the MIT prof who coined the term (and subject) cybernetics.

The same story is also told about Lev Landau, the Soviet theoretical physicist who wrote a seminal textbook compendium on theoretical physics, where he would often cheerfully omit a longwinged and non-trivial proof as "obvious".

Another tale says that at least in one such case he simply lostthe notes with the proof on a subway train, and the "obvious" bit was actually invented by his student and coauthor Evgeny Lifshits to meet a publishing deadline.

A story about Wiener (admittedly second hand). He was on sabbatical when his office was needed for a visiting professor. One look at the piles of papers and the admins hunted up his daughter, who was a student at MIT at the time. Some time later she was heard laughing and asked what about. She replied that near the bottom of one of the piles she had found a note congratulating Norbert on the birth of his daughter, her!

A certain professor at the University of Oslo in the late 19th century was on his way downhill to the university. As it happened, he had to walk against the wind. The man had to tune his watch, and positioned himself with his back against the wind, and hence against the university. When he was finished tuning the watch, he happily continued his walk, away from the university.

Ivan Pavlov, known for his work on classical conditioning, was strict and disciplined in the lab, asking the same of his assistants. (He once chastised an assistant for arriving late to work during the Russian revolution. The man had been late because he had to avoid stray bullets and an angry mob.) Outside of work, Pavlov was dirt poor, as he often forgot to pick up his own paychecks and had a tendency to lose them. On a trip to New York, he carried all his money in a big visible wad, only to be mugged in the subway. His hosts had to gather contributions to make up for his lost funds. He also once gave his wife a pair of shoes as a gift as she was about to go for a trip. Once at her destination, she found she had only one of the two shoes, with a note from her husband saying he had kept the other one to remind himself of her until her return (he failed to realize she'd need both). It's said his wife stayed with him despite his obvious absent-mindedness because she recognized his genius when in a lab.

The Curie boys (discoverers of piezoelectricity). Pierre described hitherto unknown magnetic effects, was the co-worker on the experiments that led to the discovery of radium, and after dinner you could ask him "how was that steak?" and he'd reply "I had a steak?"

Pierre's wife, Marie Curie could be like this too. Before her marriage, she was ordered by her doctor to live with her sister and brother-in-law so she'd have someone to remind her to eat.

"On rising this morning," he wrote to a friend, "I carefully washed my boots in hot water and blackened [polished] my face, poured coffee on my sardines, and put my hat on the fire to boil. These activities will give you some idea of my state of mind..."

Famously, he once sent a telegraph to his wife: "Am in Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?" She telegraphed back, "Home."

Stephen Fry claims his physicist/inventor father was a bit like this. It ended up making the young Stephen somewhat resentful towards him as it meant his mother wasn’t often able to socialise or go on holiday, and basically had to run his life for him

This Darwin Award finalist: The list includes liquefying varnish in a toaster oven, almost melting an aluminum Dutch oven through inattention, and rolling a tractor by trying to mow a too-steep slope. Again.

Part of this has been suggested to stem from ADHD; one known aspect of it is so called "hyperfocus" where someone will ignore virtually everything to the point of exclusivity. ADHD also helps explain part of the eccentricities that go hand in hand with this trope.

People whose IQ is in the top 2% have higher rates of ADHD.note People with ADHD have I Qs on both sides of the average, but the people who are outliers on either side tend to have more neural abnormalities - it just comes with the territory. Some of them make it as professors.

Dyspraxia also leads to poor focus, difficulty in organising thoughts and poor short term memory, but doesn't have any effect on actual intelligence.

Schizophrenics also have difficulty in concentrating or focusing on single thoughts. Again, no effect on intelligence.

Weak schizotypical disorders correlate quite closely with the increased intellect, especially in the abstract fields like natural sciences or math, making people who have them naturally predisposed to science occupations, but also pretty weird.

The "genius and madness connection" trope may be overrated. While there may be some overlap, possibly even some causation, there haven't been enough empirical studies done yet.

He was said to have invited a don to tea, "to welcome Stanley Casson, our new archaeology Fellow". "But, sir," the man replied, "I am Stanley Casson". "Never mind," Spooner said, "Come all the same."

Another story tells of Spooner preaching a sermon about St. Paul, but substituted the name Aristotle. When he finished, he came down from the pulpit, paused, went back up, and told his bewildered congregation: "Did I say Aristotle? I meant St. Paul."

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